News of the World phone hacking: Ex-con's work for tabloid revealed

Fourth private investigator was re-employed by Wapping after serving seven years in prison

Pressure is mounting on former News of the World editor Andy Coulson (left), who is now David Cameron's media adviser. Photograph: Martin Argles/Christopher Thomond
Martin Argles/Christopher Thomond/Guardian

When David Cameron's media adviser, Andy Coulson, was asked last July about his experience as a journalist with the ­various forms of illegal activity which are said to have occurred in Fleet Street's newsrooms, he answered clearly: "I have never had any involvement in it at all."

As Coulson now prepares for an election campaign which could see him installed at the heart of government, a simple question presents itself: was he telling the truth?

When Coulson arrived at the News of the World as deputy editor in January 2000, Mr A, a private investigator who cannot be named for legal reasons, had already been working as a freelance for the paper for several years, assiduously breaking the law in search of stories.

Evidence seen by the Guardian shows he was blagging bank accounts, bribing police officers, procuring confidential data from the DVLA and phone companies, and trading sensitive material from live police inquiries.

One private investigator who worked with him claims Mr A was also committing burglaries to obtain information for the media. Mr A was working for ­several national papers but used to boast: "Nobody pays like the News of the World pays."

Shortly after Coulson arrived at the paper, Mr A's lucrative career was cut short when he was convicted of a serious crime against a vulnerable woman and jailed.

Separately, he was the subject of a national newspaper feature which linked him to corrupt officers who were causing extreme concern at Scotland Yard.

But when finally he emerged from prison, he went back to working for the News of the World, where Coulson had risen from deputy to editor.

Databases

According to a reliable source at News International, Mr A was paid out of the paper's editorial budget and continued to "blag" confidential databases and to pay serving police officers to supply information.

Among those whom he certainly ­targeted for the News of the World were Sinn Féin MP Martin McGuinness; Andrew Morton, author of Diana: Her True Story; England footballer Gary Lineker; and Prince William. The same source says Mr A was hired to use a "Trojan Horse" email to gain illegal access to the computer hard disk of a target.

During Coulson's first three years at the paper as deputy editor, a second investigator was also working regularly for his journalists. Steve Whittamore, ran a network which specialised in "blagging" confidential data, a criminal offence unless it is justified in the public interest.

One of Whittamore's associates specialised in conning mobile phone companies into handing over customer records. A ­civilian police worker, Paul Marshall, stole data from the police national computer. Two men working for a regional office of the DVLA supplied driver details, while a Hells Angel on the south coast specialised in posing as a BT worker to procure ex-directory numbers, itemised phone bills and lists of "friends and family".

Working for numerous magazines and newspapers (including the Observer), Whittamore's network thrived, until March 2003 when the Information Commissioner's Office raided his home and seized the detailed records of more than 13,000 requests for information from a total of 305 journalists. This included 902 requests from 27 journalists at the News of the World.

Many of these requests cannot have been illegal: they asked for data from public domain sources such as the electoral register or the published accounts of companies. However, 24 News of the World journalists made a total of 270 requests which clearly involved access to confidential databases. Each of those requests was illegal unless justified by clear public interest.

An internal analysis by the Information Commissioner's Office found that all of the identifiable requests to confidential databases were "certainly or very probably" illegal.

The 24 journalists who made apparently illegal requests to Whittamore amount to more than half of the reporters and editors who were working for Coulson at the time, according to former staff.

That includes three of Coulson's executive colleagues who, according to Whittamore's records, directly commissioned confidential data from mobile phone companies, the DVLA, British Telecom and the police national computer. Coulson's name appears nowhere in Whittamore's paperwork.

Coulson's position, as stated to the select committee in July 2009, is that he had never even heard of Whittamore until his name emerged years later during legal proceedings: "I do not recall any ­conversation specifically about Whittamore. I really do not think I knew the name until it came out in the proceedings."

Coulson was asked by MPs: "Just to be clear, under your tenure as editor and ­deputy editor, as far as you were aware at the time, the News of the World did not pay people to obtain information illegally?" He replied: "Yes, that is right."

Whittamore's activities became ­public knowledge in April 2005 when he and three members of his network came to trial for selling information from the police national computer, and the News of the World was one of three newspapers named in court as customers.

Hacking

In the background, all the time that Mr A and Whittamore were ploughing their illegal furrows for the News of the World, Glenn Mulcaire was hacking voicemail messages for the paper.

Senior police officers who have examined the material seized from Mulcaire when he was arrested in August 2006, say that it shows "systematic" and "mass" hacking of voicemails by Mulcaire even though it was not possible to prove that in the terms required by a court.

Most of this mass of seized paperwork, computer records and audio tapes was never investigated by police, but details are slowly emerging. Even though the official version of events – originally endorsed by the police, the News of the World and Andy Coulson – revealed only eight victims, it is now known that three mobile phone companies traced more than 100 victims in a single 12-month period; that the police found in the material 91 Pin codes, which are need to intercept voicemail if any victims have changed the ­factory settings on their phones; and that police warned an unspecified number of victims in the government, the military, the police and the royal household that their voicemail appeared to have been hacked.

Numerous journalists who worked at the NoW at the time say that a group of senior staff was directly involved with Mulcaire who was at the heart of the newspaper's investigative effort, with a full-time contract worth £100,000 a year. They say he was routinely intercepting voicemail and assisting journalists to do the same.

When News of the World royal reporter Clive Goodman was arrested for illegally intercepting phone calls it began a sequence of events that saw the paper's editor resign, a PCC inquiry, Andy Coulson becoming Tory head of communications, legal action against the paper, which was then revealed by The Guardian, a Commons culture select committee investigation and a damning report. Here is how these events are connected.